


Virtue #1 -- Hope

by NyteFlyer



Series: Virtues [1]
Category: Donald Strachey Mysteries (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canon Gay Relationship, Drama, First Time, Gay Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-20
Updated: 2010-11-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 07:34:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NyteFlyer/pseuds/NyteFlyer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donald just wants to go home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Virtue #1 -- Hope

I was getting more pissed off by the minute -- not that this was all that unusual for me, for the person I was back then. Since the army, I’d been riding an endless wave of anger that surged and swelled and occasionally crested. But it never really seemed to recede, never gave me a moment of calm, never gave me a sense of release. 

Fighting helped. So did fucking. Back then, I did both as frequently and indiscriminately as time, circumstances and my stamina allowed. My approach to each was pretty much the same; I liked it fast, hard and anonymous. A hit and run driver, that was me. And in either case, I expected to end up on top. As far as the fighting goes, I was hardly ever disappointed. And as for the fucking, I never was.

Donald Strachey never bottomed for anyone, see? Not since the United States Armed Forces, in all its finite wisdom, decided to strip me of my rank, my dreams and my options. From then on, I was out for number one, and number two could go fuck itself, for all I cared. If I wasn’t the one calling the moves and keeping score, I didn’t play the game. Period.

The one lesson my old man bothered to drum into my thick head before he skipped out on us was that you can’t count on anyone in this life, not even yourself. Except for those four wrong-headed months when I confused lovesick delusion with real life, personal experience had pretty much underscored his point. Any “team player” instincts I had going for me shriveled up and died the day the army made it clear I was no longer welcome on their team. In the aftermath, suffice it to say I hadn’t been much of a joiner.

So what was I doing there, hanging around the edges of a crowd that wanted even less to do with me than I wanted to do with it, sucking down my third martini and itching to kick the crap out of someone? Beats the hell out of me. If I had any functioning brain cells left, I would have just gone home and gotten quietly drunk there, maybe swung by the club first for some quick, no frills head or a hand job. But I wasn’t exactly going through my smart phase during that particular period of my life. Stupid is as stupid does, as Forrest Gump would say. And back then, I kinda liked to wallow in stupid.

The Albany Gay Businessman’s Coalition Awards Banquet and Gala. What a crock of shit. I mean really, who dreams up this kind of crap? Eighty or ninety fags in black tie plus yours truly in a clearance rack suit courtesy of K-Mart, all swilling high-end liquor someone was paying out the ass for, chatting each other up as they tried to forget for a couple of hours the parents who wouldn’t invite them over for Thanksgiving dinner, the teenagers down the street who spray-painted fluorescent colored hate on their cars and driveways, the customers who took their business elsewhere once they got a fix on the ol’ status quo. It was all very genteel, very respectable, very civilized. 

Me, I wasn’t civilized. Hell, I barely even qualified as housebroken. I had to get out of there.

The problem was, I’d let one of those penguin-suited _GQ_ wannabes get under my skin, and I would have gladly given myself a good, swift kick in the balls for it if my bad knee only allowed me that much range of motion. Not just any of the penguins, mind you, but the head one, the organizer of this snorefest, a dark-haired, blue-eyed wet dream named Timothy Callahan who I’d briefly had dealings with a couple of months prior. He’d contracted me to do a little surveillance work for his boss, an aging republican congressman, who didn’t want to get his hands dirty by consorting with a seedy character like me without a middleman. My job was to gather proof -- or in this case, lack of proof -- that the thirty-something socialite the old boy had married was stepping out on him with -- God forbid -- a member of the Democratic party. It turned out to be one of those rare occasions where the client was actually happy to have shelled out my retainer for nothing, and he showed his appreciation via a hefty bonus check hand delivered to my office by his right hand man, Callahan.

Somewhere between “It’s so good to see you again, Mr. Strachey” and “The congressman appreciates your ongoing discretion in this matter,” I determined two things: One, that Callahan was gay as a goose, and two, that I’d kill to get a piece of that. So I did something I never, ever do. I mixed business with what I hoped would turn out to be oral pleasure and invited my incredibly hot client-by-proxy to lunch.

Granted, a forty-five-minute graze at the Chinese buffet down the block was hardly dinner at the Ritz, but it was a helluva lot more of an investment than I usually put into snagging a piece of ass, even one as elegantly turned out as Callahan’s. Going in, my hopes were up and so was my dick. But as we worked our way through crab rangoon and shrimp fried rice, one important detail I seemed to have missed gradually wormed its way into my lust-addled consciousness.

Callahan was not a one night stand kind of guy.

I’m not saying he’d never had one. And I’m not saying I’m a hundred percent sure he would have turned me down if I’d suggested it. What I am saying is, I couldn’t treat him that way, couldn’t use him and then toss him out like all the other disposable pieces of refuse in my life. 

He was just such a genuinely nice guy, funny and warm and interesting. You know how it is when you’re talking to someone and you aren’t sure whether they’re really listening or just waiting for their chance to speak? Callahan listened, I mean really listened, asking just the right question at the right time to keep me on track, the kindest eyes I’ve ever seen watching me from behind their designer eyewear, locked on me, barely blinking, as if whatever I was yammering on about was the most fascinating and informative thing he’d ever heard. That kindness of his, that was my undoing. He had this almost palpable aura of caring about him that made me want lunch to merge right into dinner, dinner to merge with breakfast, and breakfast to morph into an endless procession of sleepy morning kisses that stretched out into something called happily ever after.

Which was insane, of course. Donald Strachey didn’t do sleepy morning kisses. He didn’t do lunches-turned-dinners-turned-breakfasts. And he sure as hell did not do happily ever afters.

So I ran like the coward I was, making up some lame excuse and barreling out of the restaurant and out of his sight, leaving the business card he’d given me sitting on the table along with our unpaid bill for the buffet. I felt bad about that, leaving him stuck with the check like that when I’d invited him and should have been the one who paid. But by the time I realized what I’d done, it was too late to go back and make it right.

He called my cell a handful of times over the next few days, sounding upset, worried that he’d managed to offend me somehow. When I recognized his number, I sent the calls straight to voicemail, not trusting myself to avoid making a bigger fool of myself than I already had. After about a week, the calls dwindled, then stopped altogether. Somehow, the silence jarred my nerves worse than the constant shrill of my ringtone.

I’d screwed up, and screwed up bad. And I was too chickenshit to do anything about it. 

Weeks passed, and I put him out of my mind. At least, I tried to. But from time to time, when I was on my knees on the cruddy floor of some dive giving reciprocal head to a guy whose name I’d never know, I’d be haunted by the ghost of those kind blue eyes watching me, asking me why I was willing to settle for this when a simple leap of faith could have given me so much more. 

So I hung around the periphery of that oh-so-civilized gathering, observing the festivities through suspicious P.I. eyes but not interacting with anyone or participating in any real way. From time to time, I’d catch sight of Callahan smiling, shaking hands, being a part of the thing the way I knew I never could be. Yet there was this…I dunno…this _sadness_ in him I could sense from across the room. It was subtle but definitely there, something in his body language, in the way he turned inside himself from time to time, eyes dropping, shoulders slumping, a preoccupied, downward tilt to that beautiful mouth of his. And it was in the way he’d search out the guy he’d come in with, the tall blond who’d given him a breezy peck on the cheek the second they’d arrived and then drifted away to laugh and flirt with every unattached male present and a few attached ones as well.

Except for me, of course. I wasn’t exactly in his league. I obviously wasn’t in the same league as anyone else there. Hell, I’d probably had half the dicks in that room in my mouth at one time or another, but tonight they were all treating me like some sort of poor relation, unwanted and, as far as they knew, uninvited. The more I watched, the more depressed I got. It felt like an angry fist was clenching inside my chest, cutting off my airways and pounding the crap out of my ribcage. Every instinct screamed for me to cut and run, to get the hell away from this boring, pretentious pack of losers who all thought the cut of their suits made them so much better than me. But I stayed rooted to the spot, fiddling nervously with a now-empty martini glass because Callahan was there and I couldn’t stop watching him, couldn’t stop wishing desperately and inexplicably for something I knew damned well I had no hope of ever getting.

To hell with this. If I had to be humiliated, at least I didn’t have to do it sober. I was getting another drink.

As I stood at the bar being subtly overlooked by the server whose attention was on his more prosperous looking clientele, I was startled out of my self-pitying funk by a warm hand clasping my shoulder. I looked up to see blue eyes peering at me through immaculately polished lenses, and that smile, that smile that turned my insides to warm mush. 

“Mr. Strachey, I’m so glad you decided to come! I wasn’t sure you would, considering.”

“I RSVPed your invitation, didn’t I?”

“A lot of people say they’ll do something when it comes to fulfilling social obligations, then come up with an excuse to be somewhere else at the eleventh hour. It’s their idea of being polite.”

“I’m not polite,” I told him, restating what I figured was the obvious. “And if I say I’m going to do something, I do it. It’s who I am.”

“Vodka martini, extra dry, Mr. Callahan?”

Callahan glanced at the server who’d been pretending I didn’t exist for the past ten minutes and smiled. “Yes, Gregory, but please fill Mr. Strachey‘s order first. I believe he‘s been waiting a while.”

“The same,” I said over my shoulder, unable to take my eyes off Callahan for even a second. The drinks appeared in a heartbeat, and he motioned us away from the bar. We stood awkwardly by a potted ficus, test-driving our martinis. Top shelf vodka, about four times as expensive as the stuff I could usually afford, made them go down smooth as honey. “Sorry,” I said at last.

“What are you apologizing for?” 

“For running out on you that day at lunch. You must think I’m a total ass.”

He shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I understand what it’s like to have something urgent come up unexpectedly. I was enjoying your company, but I know how busy you must be,” he said in a voice even smoother than my martini. “I’m glad you were able to come tonight, though. Now that you’re here, what do you think? Are you having a good time?”

“No,” I said honestly, taking another sip of my drink. “It’s boring as hell and everyone’s making a point of letting me know I’m as out of place as I feel.”

“Why do you feel out of place?”

“Just am. Everyone else is in a tux and I’m hanging around in a cheap suit.”

He grinned. “I was just thinking that you cleaned up well.”

“Compared to what? The suit’s from _K-Mart_.”

He laughed a little at that one, a soft, intimate sound I could have listened to all night. “What difference does that make? It‘s not a bad fit, and the navy looks good on you. It’s so much better than that brown corduroy you were wearing the last time we met.”

First my heart did the happy dance because he remembered what I’d had on that day, then it took a downward plunge because he obviously thought I’d looked like crap. It pissed me off a little. Not at him, really, but at life. “Obviously, my taste and my bank account are both sub par. I’m sure everyone here will remember how inappropriate I look tonight, too.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said, and I could tell he meant it. “I sent you the invitation because I thought it would be good for your business if you could do a little networking here. I thought you might even enjoy it. I didn’t mean to put you in a position where you’d be uncomfortable. Why are you still here if it’s making you miserable?”  


“Fulfilling that social obligation, I guess,” I told him. Then what the hell, I decided to take another stab at honesty. “And there’s someone here….”

“Yes?” he prompted when he realized I’d stalled out.

“Someone I’m stupid enough to be attracted to, even though he’s way out of my league.”

“Have you told him? That you’re attracted to him, I mean.”

“Hell, no.”

“Why in the world not? I‘d think anyone would be flattered to have you approach them.”

Looking up into those kind blue eyes that seemed to be able to read every thought in my head without judging any of them, I burst into a sudden cold sweat. The room wavered and wobbled around me. 

“Mr. Strachey, are you all right?” Callahan asked, taking my elbow to steady me.

Unable to breathe and on the verge of a major freakout, I heard myself croak, “It’s hot in here. Don‘t you think it‘s hot in here?”

“Let’s get some air.” He guided me through the crowd and out the front door, one hand still holding my elbow and the other firm and strangely protective against the small of my back. Once we were outside, he led me to the corner of the steps and sat gracefully on the third from the bottom, urging me down with him. He produced a handkerchief and instead of handing it to me, began blotting my forehead and cheeks himself. “Are you all right? Are you going to get sick? Should I call someone?”

I shook my head, fumbled my tie. The fist in my chest clenched so hard I was scared I’d pop a rib. He brushed my hands away and loosened the knot himself with long, gentle fingers, then unbuttoned the collar of my shirt as well. The brush of his knuckles against my neck made me shiver. Then he did the weirdest thing. He placed the palm of his right hand flat against my chest, right over the spot where it‘d been aching all night, and he rubbed it lightly. Almost instantly, that clenched fist relaxed, and I sucked air like there was no tomorrow. 

“Breathe,” he said softly, pressing the handkerchief into my hand. “Just breathe.”

“Sorry,” I said after a while. I was embarrassed beyond words and couldn’t force myself to look at him. So I looked down at the crumpled white cloth in my fist instead and managed a weak laugh. “Well, Mr. Callahan, it looks like I owe you one. In the movies, isn‘t this the part where I’d promise to wash it and return it to you on Monday morning?”

He snorted dismissively. “My grandmother sends me a box every Christmas. I have drawers full. And Mr. Callahan’s my father, by the way. Well, Congressman Callahan, actually. Anyway, I’m Tim.”

“Tim,” I said, savoring the name. Forcing myself to meet his gaze at last, I looked up to see him watching me expectantly. “I’m Don.”

“Hi, Don,” he said quietly, his smile lighting up the night.

I smiled back. “Hi, Tim.” 

We stretched out the moment as far as we could without breaking it. “Are you feeling better?” he asked at last.

“Yeah. I just needed some air, I guess. Feels great out here.” The wind chill factor was just this side of frigid, and I was freezing my ass off. But I wasn’t about to tell him that. He was sitting close enough for our shoulders to be touching, and he radiated a warmth that had nothing to do with the weather. 

“You must have gotten overheated.”

“I guess. Not to mention the fact that those martinis packed more of a punch than I expected.”

“How many have you had?”

“Four or five,” I said, then winced when I realized how bad that sounded.

He caught it and chuckled again, giving me a chance to wallow in the lush, liquid sound of it. “You should try mine sometime.”

I just kept grinning at him like the idiot that I was, drunk, but not on the martinis, and tried to think of a reply. When I didn’t respond right away, his smile faded a little. Belatedly, I realized that might have been an actual invitation. Before I could gather my wits enough to accept, he said, “So, are you ready to head back in and take a shot at Mr. Right?”

I was already with Mr. Right, but I was still struggling with the idea of telling him so. Instead, I shrugged. “There’s no use. It’s a hopeless case.”

“Why such a defeatist attitude? There’s always hope, Donald.”

Donald, not Don. I’ve always pretty much hated the name, but somehow, that smoother-than-a-martini voice of his gave it a dignity I’d never heard before. “Like I said, he’s way out of my league. He’s obviously got money, education, a high prestige job. And he’s beautiful.”

“And your looks scare small children and animals, I’m sure,“ he said, rolling his eyes. “Besides, you know what they say about beauty only being skin deep.”

“Not with him,” I said about a hundred times more vehemently than I’d meant to. “With him, it goes all the way through. He’s the nicest…” I trailed off, feeling like a total moron.

“Then that‘s exactly what you should tell him.” He gathered himself, starting to rise, but I tugged him back down. 

“Yeah, right. I’m just an average guy from the wrong side of the tracks. What in the hell would he want with me? Besides, he’s with someone.”

“Oh?” he said. When I didn‘t continue, he bumped my shoulder with his own. “Is it serious?”

“No clue. They came in together, but the asshole ditched him five minutes in and hasn’t been near him since.”

Something clicked in his head so loud and clear I swear I could hear it. He studied me intently. “That should make you happy, then.”

“If you wanna know the truth, it pisses me off. I’ve been watching him go through the motions all night, you know? Acting sociable and putting on the show of having a good time. But he’s sad. I barely know him and I can see that much. He doesn’t deserve to be sad. If he was with me, I’d never leave him. I’d stay by his side, no matter what.”

“Ask him to dance, Donald,” he said softly.

“I can’t,” I protested weakly. “What if he says no?”

“He won’t say no.”

“He might,” I argued stubbornly. “And if he does….”

“If he does?”

“Then I guess it’ll just break my fucking heart.”

His face was mere inches from mine. “He won’t say no,” he said quietly. 

“Tim….” I began, my voice shaking.

“Ask him to dance, Donald,” he said again. “He won‘t break your heart. If you’ll just give him a chance, I promise you, he will never break your heart.”

That was it. I’d lost the power of speech for the duration. Somehow, I managed to slip my hand into his, felt his fingers curl around my own, warm and reassuring, as I looked at him in mute appeal. Very seriously, he nodded, eyes locked on mine. Then he was guiding me off the steps and onto the grassy lawn, holding me close as we swayed to the snatches of music drifting our way from the party above. We were a good fit, Tim and me. He had a few inches on me, and that made it comfortable -- natural, even -- for me to lay my head on his shoulder and relinquish control, to just relax and let him lead us, both in the dance and wherever else we were going. 

His left arm was around my waist, pressing my body firmly, sensually against his own. His right hand cupped my head, those long fingers of his trailing through my hair. He was shivering a little bit, beginning to feel that wind. So I pulled him even closer, slipped my hand under his jacket and rubbed his back to warm him. His lips brushed my cheek. I closed my eyes, terrified and revved and strangely comforted all at once. Hopeful. That was it. I felt hopeful in a way I hadn’t in a helluva long time.

I didn’t want to go home anymore. I was already there. 


End file.
